What Are Hit Points?
A recent discussion with reader Tommi turned into a discussion about what, exactly, hit points are in Dungeons and Dragons. When we discovered two different definitions for hit points, the issue turned to which one was right or how to interpret them both simultaneously. Our was limited to hit points as they applied to living creatures, as objects have different definition and standard for hit points.
According to the SRD, “Your hit points measure how hard you are to kill.” It goes on to expand, “Hit points mean two things in the game world: the ability to take physical punishment and keep going, and the ability to turn a serious blow into a less serious one.”
However, according the 3.5 PHB, hit points are “a measure of a character’s health.”
Here we have a conflict in the definitions and the beginnings of a problem. The problem is further convoluted by the PHB and the SRD both saying “Constitution represents your character’s health and stamina.”
These descriptions and definitions only give us half the picture of exactly what everything does.
Constitution provides bonuses or penalties to the fortitude save and hit points, indicating that it provides a general understanding of the creature’s over-all health, regardless of it’s current condition. The fact that normal combat can take place, and a creature may be slain without it’s Constitution being affected until it’s death. In fact, as an ability, Constitution cannot be damaged in normal combat.
Hit points have a direct and obvious correlation to the creature’s death - at -10, the creature is dead. This would obviously imply a connection to health, but there are still multiple ways to interpret this connection.
One interpretation says that the SRD definition, that hit points represent “the ability to take physical punishment and keep going, and the ability to turn a serious blow into a less serious one,” can be said to apply to any and all hit points beyond the first. The PHB definition, that hit points are “a measure of a character’s health,” applies to the hit points between negative ten and one, which is represented by the character becoming disabled or dying after dropping below one hit point.
A second interpretation says that both definitions apply simultaneously to the whole range of hit points. This interpretation, while less realistic, is much simpler when calculating the effects of different in-game events and mechanics that relate to hit points, such as damage reduction and healing.
A third interpretation states that hit points represent health and only health, and that “the ability to turn a serious blow into a less serious one” is represented sufficiently through Damage Reduction.
Determining what definition of hit points applies in a game helps interpret exactly what happens during play, painting a smoother and more consistent image for the participants.
How do you define hit points? Is it something you ever think about? Has the definition ever affected game play, and not just your enjoyment?
Evaluating Your Game: Part Four
This is part four in an ongoing series, designed to help you evaluate and improve your game from the ground up. Previously, I discussed Genre, Setting, and Scope, followed by an analysis of Character Generation Methods and The Role of Randomness.
In most RPGs, you will eventually encounter something in character advancement that has a pre-requisite - something you must already have to be able to qualify for the advancement. These will typically apply to traits, classes, and occasionally skills.
Pre-requisites are good because they serve the function of providing a barrier between who may use something and who may not. This may be because of a concern with specialization, such as with d20’s prestige classes, or because the system does not implement a point-buy advancement and there is a desire to make somethings more costly, as with d20’s feat system.
The first concern with using pre-requisites is that it may make things too costly for a player to pursue - the Whirlwind Attack feat being an ideal example, it is highly desirable but almost never pursued because of the litany of pre-requisites.
The second concern with using pre-requisites is that they can go against a character concept. The Whirlwind Attack feat is another perfect example of this - among it’s pre-requisites are three defensive feats, one of them (Combat Expertise) will never see use if it was taken only because of the pre-requisites. Players will most likely try to avoid this wasted space on their character sheets.
There are one of two solutions to this problem:
First, you may offer alternate pre-requisites, a different path that can accommodate different concepts so that they may access the same thing.
Second, you may create an alternative to what the pre-requisites originally guarded - the alternative would represent the same skills if they were lacking whatever pre-requisites were not included and augmented by whatever they were replaced by. In the case of Whirlwind Attack, a version which did not include the defensive feats might provoke Attacks of Opportunity.
The use of pre-requisites is a balancing act - you must be sure that the requirements do not outweigh the perceived benefits, and that the requirements of a feature will appeal to everyone that would be interested in that feature.
Critique on Fire-and-Forget
The Fire-and-Forget Magic System, whereby casters memorize spells in order to cast them, losing the knowledge to cast them and thus the ability to cast the spell again, was first presented in Jack Vance’s Dying Earth series. Gary Gygax used Vance’s work for a number of sources in the early days of Dungeons and Dragons, but he decided to use a Vancian magic system for two reason:
- It’s easy to balance for game play.
- It has no resemblance to any real world mythology or occult belief system.
At the time, both reasons were very good. Dungeons and Dragons was almost always under scrutiny in the beginning, due to the various beliefs and legends of ties to devil worship or some other such nonsense.
Today, however, neither reason is necessary. Numerous games have demonstrated a number of ways to balance spell casting systems without resorting to a Vancian system, many by simply introducing mana or an equivalent stat. In addition, role-playing has become much more mainstream, and with information available many myths are dispelled. Some organizations, like The Escapist, exist solely to address these myths and educate the public.
It is, however, the second reason which disturbs me the most. I cannot think of a single Fantasy book which has used Vancian magic since Dying Earth, excluding the novels which are based off of RPGs. What am I supposed to model and emulate when presented this situation? The images and archetypes that I am constantly surrounded with are replaced by more constricting ones.
While it is true that in more recent editions of Dungeons and Dragons the Sorcerer has somewhat fixed this problem, though exclusively for arcane casters, if one does not go searching beyond the core books.
For me, this has always been a problem not just of game mechanics, but of disconnect from everything I’m familiar with outside of gaming, and I feel unable to bring a lot of that into the game with systems that use Vancian magic.
LARP: A Tale of Two Games
The following is a comparison between two experiences I had with two different LARPs, and an analysis of the small crucial differences between how the two games are run and feel when played.
At the end of 2005, I had been playing RPGs for nearly ten years, yet I still had not played a LARP, a Live Action Role Playing Game. This type of game was not nearly as popular in my area as the Table Top variant, and was in fact looked down upon by many gamers - those who played in LARPs were seen to be even more geeky and nerdy, to a level that was perceived as strange, if not scary. This idea was enforced by several of the more prominent LARPers in the area who happened to fit an archetype, that of the 28 year old man, paler than a corpse, living in his parent’s basement and working at a store soley for the employee discounts it would bring him on Magic cards, video games, and books. Despite the description, I would get to know several of these people years later, only to discover they were fairly normal.
In December of 2005, however, I was planning to attend PhilCon and saw on the program schedule that a game of Cthulhu Live (a LARP based on Call of Cthulhu) was going to be run on the second night. Unable to resist, I promptly signed up and filled out a questionaire about what kind of player I was and what kind of character I would be willing to play. The anticipation built for a month.
When I inquired for more details at the Convention itself, I discovered that the game was being run by representatives from Skirmisher Publishing, and would be using the third edition of the game, which had not yet been released. The game was to last four hours, with all the players using pre-generated characters. They explained the rules, which took less than five minutes and were very simple and sensible:
Everything but combat proceeded in real time, players could call a GM over at any time to ask questions or attempt something by using one of their characters skills. If combat was declared, time was slowed and players declared their actions using a tick-based initiative system. If you were proficient with a weapon which you had use of at the time and were within range of your target, you were assumed to hit and deal a set amount of damage unless your target had managed to shield themselves.
To put it mildly, I had never had more fun playing a game. To be fair, there were some problems with it, all of which were imposed by the fact that it was a four hour session for a one shot game at a convention. If you have ever played a Call of Cthulhu game, you’re probably well aware that it is impossible to complete in four hours, except by all the players dying.
In the two years following, I received several invitations to join a LARP game of Vampire: The Masquerade from friends and acquantainces I had gamed with in the past. Remembering the fun I had playing Cthulhu Live, I accepted the first offer I could schedule into my plans. Before the night of the game, I poured over several books for the game and designed a character with the help of one of the older players. Satisfied with the result, I eagerly waited for my first night in this new game.
The reality of the game shattered the polished look on the surface of the system and the enticing environment it provided to play in, both of which I had been so enamored with. Execution of the rules seemed to grind the game to a halt, which had the unfortunate side effect of shattering the immersion of the game - which for me, is the best part of playing a LARP.
Every time there was a conflict or someone had to use a skill, role playing would cease for a moment while players and Story Tellers stopped to play Rock-Paper-Scissors, often several games consecutively. This one aspect of the game literally stopped me from enjoying it, despite everything else that was great about the game, because it destroyed any sense of immersion that I had, it wrecked my Suspension of Disbelief.
This was the fundamental difference between my experiences with the two games. Vampire had a resolution system which interferred with immersion, while Cthulhu Live side-stepped the problem entirely by adopting a Diceless resolution system. Other LARP systems have adopted a different Diceless system, wherein combat is played out by the players, using a physical representation of combat instead of a symbolic one based on stats or a randomizer.
Has anyone else seen a game that was ruined by a relatively small part of the game, or found that a game’s system looked good on paper, but felt impossible to execute properly?
“Instant” Spell Duration
Many spells in Dungeons and Dragons and other Fantasy RPGs have a duration which is listed as “Instant” or “Instantaneous,” meaning that the moment casting is complete, the spell’s effects have taken place, and the magical energies of the spell have been consumed or disippated by the spell’s effects. The description of many spells, however, would seem to contradict this element of the descriptor. The two most well known examples are Lightning Bolt and Burning Hands, which describe the duration as “Instantaneous,” but also describe the spell’s as being released through the caster’s finger tips, and traveling towards their respective targets.
Though normally innocuous, this slight contradiction can bring up some problems when explored and/or exploited by a curious player. These spells cannot be truly Instananeous, if their effects and energies do not expire before traveling; an action which inherently takes time. While this problem will rarely crop it’s head directly when it comes to gameplay, some players may try to exploit the inconsistancy, and many players may suffer a small disruption of Suspension of Disbelief, and the Sense of Possibility. How can this be resolved, without shutting down players or altering game mechanics (or ignoring the issue of realism)?
One, rather simple solution, is that the spell’s effects begin before the spell’s casting is completed, but that the effects will ultimately be negated if the spell’s casting is not completed properly. This, however, can bring about several problems: What happens to an object or creature that was being summoned when a spell is interrupted? Was it in transit at the time of interruption, between locations, planes, or dimensions? Does it suffer any harm as a result of this? What happens to the energy the caster gathered in his hands to throw at his enemies?
Another solution which manages to avoid the complexities and problems brought on by the first, is largely theoretical. Instantaneous spells are not instantaneous in reality, only in effect. We may safely assume that magical energy has zero mass or is able to reduce an object/creature’s mass to zero, and so spell’s with a descriptor of “Instantaneous” travel at the speed of light, at which point time dilation forces the passage of time to halt in regards to the spell for the duration of it’s travel. Interestingly, as objects speed towards the speed of light, time not only slows down, but space contracts, at the speed of light, to the point of assuming zero length.
Thus, the spell has an instantaneous or null duration, allowing spells which require some form of travel, such as Lightning Bolt or Burning Hands to continue to meet the requirements needed to preserve game play and balance as well as a Suspension of Disbelief and Sense of Possibility for both the players and narrators.
